


Heartbeats

by EmmaArthur



Series: Whumptober 2019 [16]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Not Quite Soulmates AU, Whumptober, more of less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 18:24:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21081047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaArthur/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: That day in the toolshed, Michael leaves a handprint on Alex's ankle.





	Heartbeats

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober day 16: **Pinned-Down**.
> 
> [war, injuries, abuse, panic attacks, implied PTSD, chronic pain, death]

**1.**

Alex is fairly sure his heart is trying to free itself from his chest.

He's imagined his first time on many a sleepless night, in many ways. He wondered if it would be with a stranger or a friend, if it would happen soon or far in the future.

He never imagined how much the shadow of his father would constrict him, would choke him. Michael is removing his pants, smiling at him shyly, and Alex can't breathe. He wishes he could say it's because of how beautiful Michael is−he is, inside and out, breathtaking−but the reality is that he's terrified.

What if it confirms what his father says, that it's a perversion, a sickness of his mind that makes him want this? What if he realizes halfway through that he's really a monster?

What if Michael, beautiful, sweet Michael, sees him for what he is?

“Alex, what's wrong?” Michael has dropped his pants, crouching in front of him in his boxers, a look of worry on his face.

Gasping for air, Alex draws his leg to his chest, scooting across the bed until he's backed in the corner. He can't escape. Does he want to?

“Alex!”

“I−I'm sorry,” Alex breathes. “I can't.”

He takes a gulp of air and hides his face in his hands. “I'm sorry,” he repeats.

“Hey, it's okay,” Michael murmurs. Alex flinches when his warm hand settles on his right ankle, the closest point Michael can touch. Michael doesn't remove his hand, though, and Alex settles into the touch, finding that it grounds him. “We don't have to do it.”

Alex breathes heavily for a few more minutes, but he's not desperate for air anymore. “I'm sorry,” he keeps muttering. “I want to, but−”

“I understand,” Michael says. “Really, I get it.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. Just−tell me. Do you want me to leave?”

“No!” Alex says immediately. Their kiss was amazing. But Michael is never going to kiss him again, now, right? Not after Alex freaked out on him. “Stay.”

“Okay, I'm staying.” Michael's hand hasn't left Alex's ankle. “I'm here. Tell me what's wrong.”

“I−I don't know,” Alex breathes. “I got scared.”

“That's okay,” Michael says. “Do you want to stop, or do you want to try again?”

“I want to−I don't want to stop,” Alex admits. “But I don't know−”

“We can go slow. It doesn't have to be today.”

Alex nods. “You still want−”

“Of course. I like you, Alex. A lot.”

Michael moves, slowly, telegraphing his moves, until he's sitting right in front of Alex, with only Alex's pulled up legs between them. His hand still hasn't moved. “Here,” he says. “Can I come closer?”

Alex nods shakily.

“Can I kiss you again?”

Another nod. It's awkward, with Alex's legs between them, and Alex has to meet him halfway, but the kiss is just as incredible as their first. It's like there's a connection between them. It grows, with each kiss. Alex feels the warmth of Michael's lips on his, and the warmth of his hand on Alex's ankle.

For just an instant, the warmth is blinding. Alex couldn't describe what he feels, if pressed. But all the fear is gone, suddenly, and all that remains is love.

“What's that?” Michael asks later, pointing at Alex's right ankle as he's ready to put his pants back on.

Alex's reflex is to hide, to pull up his pants and come up with some kind of excuse for whatever bruise Michael spotted−though Michael has been impressively good at not commenting on any of his scars, and Alex has returned the favor. But he takes one look at it, a mark going round the base of his ankle, and he realizes it's not a bruise.

It's about the right color for a fading bruise, blue bordering on green, but it's _shimmering. _Alex has never seen anything quite like it. Almost forgetting Michael's presence for a moment, he strokes the perfectly smooth area with a frown, fascinated. The mark, whatever it is, seems to activate even more under his touch and glows.

“Fuck, it looks like… Fuck fuck fuck,” Michael takes a step back, putting a hand over his mouth. Alex looks up at him.

“What is it?” he asks. For some reason, the mark doesn't scare him, though he feels a sudden need to hide it, a surge of _danger run hide_. He finishes putting on his pants, covering his ankle.

“Michael, what is it?” he asks again.

“It's− I can't−” Michael stutters in panic. He takes a deep, steadying breath, but the look in his eye is still the one of a deer caught in headlights. A scared animal. “It'll fade,” he says a little more calmly. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to−”

“To what? What did you do? What is this thing?” Alex presses, now starting to feel worried. The thing is on his _skin_. It should scare him more than it does. Maybe it's the afterglow, he feels too elated to truly care, but Michael is panicking and Alex needs to know _why._

“I− I'll explain,” Michael seems to decides, and it strangely calms them both down. “But not here, not while we're half naked. Just...it's nothing bad, it won't hurt you, and it will go away.”

“Okay,” Alex says, a little lost. “When will you explain?”

“I don't know. Tonight. In the desert? It will be better there, if there's no one around. But I need to talk to someone first.”

“Who?”

Michael shakes his head, and picks up his shirt from the floor. But he doesn't have time to put it on before the door of the shed opens.

“Dad,” Alex murmurs, his stomach dropping.

Jesse Manes advances on him. “This ends now,” he says.

The rest of the evening is drowned in panic and pain and _hurt_. Alex is so terrified that he barely realizes that he's screaming along with Michael as his father smashes his hand with a hammer. He realizes even less, later, that the pain in his hand isn't from the beating he just took. His three broken ribs are. His broken collarbone and his concussion too. But his left hand is intact, not even bruised.

And yet it aches enough that Alex can barely use it for the next few weeks. It doesn't matter that much, since his father has restricted him to his room for the foreseeable future. Alex doesn't need his left hand to sign the papers Jesse shoves under his nose a week later. Enlistment papers.

Alex never makes it to graduation, never says goodbye to any of his friends. He's not allowed to go to Rosa's funeral, even though she was his best friend's sister. Two months later, when his collarbone is healed enough, he packs a bag and walks in a plane, and he's certain he's never coming back to Roswell.

O n his right ankle, the mark is still there, shimmering like the first day,  a misshaped handprint ,  a nd it pulls at him constantly.  H is hand still twinges in pain he doesn't understand.  T he only thing he can think  about is a boy who was never given the chance to explain, and now never will.

**2.**

M ichael doesn't figure it out until weeks later. After that night, he can barely feel anything beside the pain in his hand, and even if he could, he wouldn't be overly surprised to feel like he's been run over by a truck.

He never gets to explain to Alex, because he doesn't see Alex again. He figures it doesn't matter, that the mark will fade and Alex will probably forget about it, because in the grand scheme of things, it was the most innocuous thing that happened that night. After a while, Michael himself mostly forgets about the handprint he left on Alex's ankle.

He never meant to. He didn't even know he could leave a handprint on someone like Max can.  And he didn't heal Alex, or kill him, so he doesn't understand what happened.

It terrifies him, though. Alex almost found out. Hell, Michael was almost ready to tell Alex, right there and then. But now, with what Isobel did, and what Max and him did to cover it up, it's more important than ever that no one finds out about them.

Michael never tells Max and Isobel. Their relationship is destroyed after that night, anyway. Michael is alone again, like during his first years on Earth. He stays to check on Isobel, to make sure that it doesn't happen again, but he retreats into himself. He gives her a shoulder to lean on, when she needs it, but he never shares in return.

He does his best to set his hand, but he knows it's not healing right. It hurts, so much that he's downing bottles of acetone faster than he can buy them. He keeps it wrapped up in a semblance of a splint, and when people asks, he spins a story about sprained fingers from a bar fight. No one asks twice. No one cares enough to.

He learns through the town's grapevine that Alex, Master Sergeant Jesse Manes' youngest son, the one who's always seemed like he wouldn't live up to his father's expectations, has followed in his father's footsteps and enlisted. He learns it when Alex is already on his way to boot-camp, and he doesn't quite understand why he spends the next few months feeling far more sore and tired than his current lack of a job, owning to his broken hand, can justify.

There's no big moment of revelation. Michael doesn't wake up one day and figure out that the mark he left on Alex's ankle, in a moment of incredible bliss and apprehension, never faded. Or that it links his emotions and his pain to Alex's. The realization comes gradually, when he ends up with sore spots on his body that show no sign of bruising. When he's overtaken by sadness in the strangest moments, in the middle of trying to fix the engine of his truck one-handed. It makes him smile at awkward times, and cry far more than he used to.

He hopes to hell that the link doesn't work both ways. He can't ask Max, the only person who might know, because there's no way he's going to reveal what happened with Alex to him, not when they still can't look at each other. He doesn't ask Isobel, because Isobel needs him, not the other way around.

He keeps it to himself, and after a while, he realizes he's come to treasure it. They may have only had a few days together, but Michael fell hard for Alex, and he's steadfastly not falling out of love, even if he hasn't even heard of Alex for months. Even if Alex never said goodbye. The link is the only thing he has. It soon becomes the only thing he can think about.

In his worst moments of loneliness, Michael doesn't go out under the stars by the crash site anymore. Instead, he lays in his bed in the old Airstream he's renting from Sanders until he can buy it, and he reaches out for the connection. In those moments, it's almost like he has Alex pressed next to him.

Almost like he's not completely alone.

Alex takes even longer to understand. He simply doesn't have the same frame of reference: figuring out that the reason his left hand is nearly useless through the summer, and keeps occasionally seizing over the next years, is too large a conceptual leap.

Michael's deep feeling of longing, of _missing_, blends with his own and goes entirely unnoticed. Alex makes it through basic training by gritting his teeth, and swearing to himself never to touch a guitar again. Giving up on the life he wanted is hard, but he had to go through with it fully, or he'll never stop pining.

Except the pining doesn't stop, even long after Alex has left Roswell behind, and stopped missing his music. Michael is still there, at the back of his mind, every second of every day. And Michael is on his ankle, in the form of a handprint, the only thing Alex has of him.

He closes himself off from his emotions, until he can, in all circumstances, show a facade of neutrality. It's perfect in his job, and it gets him promoted quickly. He takes to computers almost naturally, though he's not quite sure how he suddenly acquired such an ease with math, where he used to struggle in school. It doesn't matter. It allows him to go to college and become an officer.

And if he finds himself silently crying at night, or waking up screaming from nightmares, well, no one is there to see.

He's fine. He's good at his job. He squashes down the loneliness and the longing until it's just a stinging in the back of his mind, easy to ignore.

The first time he feels something that's distinctly not his, he's in no state to understand where it comes from. It's one of his first missions as an officer, the first week of his second deployment. He's in base camp, trying to hack the surveillance cameras of an insurgent headquarters, to be able to direct the air missile his team is ready to send.

He's confirmed, his heart heavy but set, that there are only known insurgent men in the building, no civilians. It's not the first time he's killed someone, but it's the first time he's ordered a strike himself, from a distance, in cold blood. He's okay with it, he thinks, reminding himself of the files after files he read of what these men have done. Except seconds after he's given the order, after the missile is launched, the men aren't alone anymore. In the grainy video on Alex's computer, there's a woman, and a child.

It's too late.

It's only when he's in his bunk that night, trying to muffle his sobs in his pillow, that he feels it. He's absently stroking his ankle, too far gone in his pain to notice the self-comforting gesture, and waves of _worry hurt comfort _are rushing over him, not quite strong enough to overpower his own emotions.

It keeps happening, over the years. Alex steels his heart over even more, and goes back to work. He requests to be moved to the field fully, where he can be on the ground working, in the middle of the danger, instead of ordering strikes from afar. He infiltrates insurgent buildings, and hacks into their systems from the inside, depending on his team to watch his back.

He comes back stateside for a little less than two years, and notices the alien feelings getting stronger. He still doesn't understand, but he knows how to identify them, now.

It's easy. They're the only emotions he has left.

His third deployment starts like a dream, and ends like a nightmare. He goes for harder and more dangerous missions. The foreign emotions are getting weaker again, and he needs to _feel_. Adrenaline is what does it.

It works, until the building he's investigating explodes around him.

**3.**

When the unbearable noise and pain and fear start to settle, Alex doesn't move for a moment. He knows the numbness isn't going to last. The ceiling came down on him, after all. The lack of pain isn't normal.

The initial shock wears off quickly, and he wishes it hadn't. It comes with the realization that he's pinned down, and he can't move. His leg is stuck under a metal beam, broken, and Alex is pretty sure that the blood flow is cut.

The second realization, beside the dislocated shoulder and what feels like bad whiplash−he hopes that's what it is, not a broken vertebra in his neck−is that he's alone.

He was in this room with half his team ten minutes ago, two men and a woman he's come to see as siblings, and now he's alone. They're all gone.

As he weeps and screams and rages, he's already lost hope that he's going to make it out alive.

Michael wakes up to pain. It's one of the worst pain he's ever felt, on par with when his hand was broken−possibly worse. His right leg feels like it's about to rip off, his neck and shoulders are on fire, and worst of all, he can't _move._

He writhes on his bed in the Airstream, biting his hand until it bleeds. There's nothing physically wrong with him, he knows.

It's Alex.

The sudden grief that overpowers him is Alex's, too. But the fear, the helplessness, the utter dread−they share that.

Alex drifts in and out for hours. He tries to move and passes out of the pain, than wakes up again to find nothing's changed. No one is coming for him.

He's going to die here.

The pain only gets worse, until it's so bad that his body just shuts it off, secondary shock settling in. He's numb, again, except for the fading _pain fear hurt_ pulsing out, that he knows isn't his.

It's fading because it comes from the handprint, Alex finally realizes, nine years too late. The handprint on his ankle, which is growing colder and colder, the blood flow cut off. Dying flesh.

It's from Michael. Michael is the one who comforted him through all these years, who _felt_ for him.

And now he's almost gone.

That's when he starts hallucinating. He sees flashes of Michael, first lying down crying, holding his leg, and then coming toward him. Michael holding his hand, gently, as they wait together. Michael kissing him, one last time. Alex smiles.

In the middle of a war he doesn't believe in anymore, he's going to die in peace.

It's been seventeen hours and thirteen minutes since he woke up in pain when Michael feels the ghost of a kiss on his lips, and the link grow cold.

And just like that, the pain is gone.

He throws up over the side of the bed, the feeling of dying flesh crawling over him, and he weeps.

Alex is gone.

**4** **.**

_I hope she was worth it, Max, _ Michael hears Isobel's voice echo in his head, driving at full speed toward the desert. He's seething. Max went and  _resurrected _ a girl he hasn't seen in ten years, throwing away twenty years of keeping their secret, and for what? It's not like they haven't let someone die before. Hell, they've killed people themselves, and covered it up. So why? Because he still loves her, ten years later?

Michael feels the tears well up in his eyes, and the road blurs, but he doesn't slow down. Maybe that's the problem. Because Michael once came really close to telling someone their secret, only he never got the chance. And he didn't get the chance to save Alex, either. Not from his father, that day at the tool shed, and not  eight months ago when Alex died.

And neither Max nor Isobel ever knew anything about it. The connection between them doesn't extend to Michael, not really. No, Michael's real connection was with Alex, ever since he inadvertently left  a mark  on Alex's ankle in a moment of overwhelming feeling of  _home_ , like only Alex has ever been able to give him. So Max and Isobel never knew about the years he spent hating the distance between them, and wondering if Alex felt the same. Drowning his pain in acetone and booze. They don't know about the day he woke up screaming,  unable to move, his leg on fire. The seventeen hours of the worst pain he's ever felt−and then, so much worse, the moment he went cold. Michael felt Alex's flesh die, and the connection fade away, and he's been able to feel nothing else ever since.

He didn't bother to check. He can't stand the thought of reading it on a screen, in some random local paper, _Decorated Airman born and raised in Roswell dies in combat in Iraq._ That's not Alex. His Alex is so much more than that. So Michael has kept drinking more to keep the pain at bay, and he barely bothers to leave his Airstream for anything but work and booze. Isobel is worried, he knows, but it doesn't matter. There's not much left in his life that matters.

Until today, there was still keeping their origins secret, to protect his siblings. And now Max has blown even that away.

Michael frowns as he gets closer to his Airstream and sees a couple of Humvees parked nearby. No one ever comes out here, so they must want something with him. Foster is waiting for him, signaling him to park.

“Michael. Came knocking. You were gone.”

“So you call in the cavalry?” Michael frowns, a little desperately. The men in fatigues are clearly from the base, and he doesn't like that at all.

“The Air Force is acquiring the land. You got to move your rig. I'll miss you.”

Michael blinks. It could be worse, if this is just about the land.  He'll hate moving, and finding another job will be a pain, but at least Max and Isobel are safe. On this end, at least.

He sees a man try to peer inside his trailer, and panics. He's was already half drunk when he left yesterday, and he's pretty sure he left the console piece he was working on in full view.

“Hey, that's private proper−” he starts, striding toward the man, but he stops dead in his tracks.

The man is…

“Alex,” Michael breathes. “It's not possible. You're−”

He can't breathe, suddenly.

“Michael,” Alex says, and it's his voice, his face, his mouth, his eyes, his everything. It's not possible.

Michael gasps a few times. He wants to react to the panic in his chest, do something, run, but he can't take his eyes off Alex.

“You're dead,” he murmurs.

“What?” Alex asks, bewildered.

“You're...you died...I−I felt it,” Michael rambles. “It's not possible.”

“I'm not dead, Michael,” Alex says firmly. “What on Earth...”

His eyes stray toward the group of other Airmen before he hesitatingly takes Michael's arm. Michael almost flinches back, but suddenly  _Alex's_ hand is on him and it's a lifeline. He can't live without it, he can't breathe without it.

“But you...the mark...”

Alex's eyes widen. “Oh,” he says. “Oh. Fuck. I...I think I can explain. But...not now, not here.”

“Then when?” Michael frowns. He's lost control of the whole situation. He's lost control of everything. But Alex is somehow here, in front of him.

“Tonight. I'm off at five, I'll come by, okay?”

_No,_ Michael wants to say.  _I can't let you go again._ If Alex leaves his line of sight, he might never come back.

He nods mutely.

“Good.” Alex looks almost as lost as he feels, but he's not, he can't be. He's alive. He's here. “I'll see you later.” 

He shoves what must be the eviction notice in Michael's hands, and walks away like an escape. Michael barely registers the crutch he's leaning on, too  shaken to focus.  He unlocks the door to his Airstream−by hand, not telekinesis, he's not out of it enough to do that in front of a bunch of Airmen−and stumbles inside.

M ichael would like to be dramatic and say that the six hours he waits for Alex to come back, anxiously, wondering if it was all a dream, are the longest of his life. But they aren't. Not even close. He's had ten years of long hours, of chest-gripping anxiety, every time their connection activated with pain and he didn't know if it meant Alex had been injured−killed−at war. And no hour can be longer than the seventeen he spent pinned down in bed feeling like he was dying−knowing that Alex was, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

When Alex shows up, he's out of uniform, and driving a civilian car. Michael's mind zeroes in on Alex's face as soon as he's close enough to see, and he can't look away for even a second.

Alex is alive. It's still too amazing to believe.

Michael makes an aborted movement toward him, wanting to touch him again, make sure that it's real. Alex stiffens, just a little.

“Come sit,” Michael says, waving to the two chairs he placed around his firepit. They need to talk first. They haven't seen each other in ten years, and the connection they shared for most of that time doesn't change that fact.

Alex limps to the chair−Michael notices the crutch, this time, and it stirs something up, but he can't quite make the connection. He only sees that Alex is hurting. And that he can't feel that pain. They've shared pain for ten years, and now...nothing.

“I felt you die, Alex,” he says, dropping into the other chair.

Alex fidgets with the zipper of his sweatshirt. “No, not really,” he shakes his head. “I mean, I almost did die, but−”

“The connection, it went cold. I could feel you die, I felt your body stop living, I−” Michael's voice breaks.

“The mark you made was on my ankle,” Alex says, like that explains anything.

Michael just stares at him, trying to understand.

“I, uh,” Alex starts, before he seems to decide on something else. He bends down to roll up his pant leg over his ankle, where the mark was. Michael watches, frowning, until his leg appears and…

It's not flesh. It's metal, dark metal,  titanium maybe. Michael's breath hitches.

“I think that's what you felt,” Alex says. “I was pinned down under a collapsed building. They couldn't save it.” He rolls his pant leg higher to show Michael where his socked, flesh leg ends, a little below the knee.

“Alex,” Michael breathes. “Fuck.”

“I'm okay,” Alex says.

“I thought you'd died. I was _so_ sure−”

“I'm here.”

Alex opens his arms. There's hesitation and conflict in his eyes, but he stands up and lets Michael hug the breath out of him. He closes his arms around Michael and at least some of it melts into relief.

“I've missed you,” he murmurs.

“Me too,” Michael says in his shoulder. “Oh, you have no idea.”

**5** **.**

It's funny, how they still fit perfectly together, after ten years. How they can't seem to find a proper bed, too, where they can spread out and be comfortable, instead of squishing together and nearly falling down and banging their elbows.

Michael's Airstream is not the best place Alex has ever had sex in, that's for sure. But it doesn't matter, because it's Michael. It's them.

The leg is an adjustment. Michael still looks shocked and sad every time he catches sight of it, and Alex hates that. Alex hasn't been touched that way since the injury, and feeling Michael's scarred hand caress his stump, even as careful as he is, nearly sends him over the edge.

But it's okay. They make it work.

It's the first time either of them sleeps through the night since that day.

Alex wakes up to Michael's sleeping body, and decides there's nothing better in the whole world.

“You stayed,” Michael murmurs, when he opens his eyes.

“It was late. I was tired.”

“Is that why you stayed?”

Alex doesn't answer, sitting up instead, careful not to send either of them over the edge of the bed. He tucks his good leg under him.

“What was that...mark? Bond?” he asks. “You said you would explain.”

“It's...complicated,” Michael says, closing his eyes.

“Guerin, I've been waiting for that explanation for ten years. Whatever it is, I've probably imagined something wilder.”

Michael sighs, sitting up in turn, and catches his eyes. “Wilder than an alien imprint?”

“Alien?”

“Yeah. I'm an alien. From the 1947 crash.”

“Then yeah,” Alex shrugs. “I've imagined wilder things. Aliens are just another day in Roswell. But tell me more.”

Michael lets out a relieved snort, and tells him. About the pods in the turquoise mines, about Isobel and Max, and even about Rosa. Alex is fascinated and terrified and _in love._

“I didn't understand it was you until you were gone,” he admits in a whisper, almost ashamed. “But you were there for me the whole time. Thank you.”

“Oh, Alex,” Michael sobs. “You were there for me too, even if you didn't know it.”

“You thought I was dead.”

“The last few months have been...hard, yeah. Really hard. But you're here now. You're alive.”

Alex runs a hand on Michael's cheek, drying the tears.

“I'm here,” he says, pulling him in for a kiss. Michael is warm against his skin, almost burning, and some of the warmth transfers to Alex.

Then something changes and Michael gasps. Alex _feels_ it change, feels the foreign sensations he was once so used to flood him again. He's missed them. The slightly heightened perception, the strange taste of acetone in the back of his mouth, even the low buzzing pain in his hand.

“Look,” Michael says softly, pointing at Alex's bare chest.

Alex looks down. On his skin is a new handprint, shimmering beautifully in the low light. He feels a surge of _warmth comfort love_, stronger than it's ever been.

“The pain,” Michael murmurs. “Do you feel that all the time?”

Alex frowns, but Michael looks down at his leg. Oh. The link goes both ways, and it means Michael feels everything he feels.

“It's not too bad today,” he says. He would rather lie, but Michael should probably be warned. “I'm sorry,” he adds. “I wish you didn't feel that too.”

“Did you feel my hand, all this time?”

Alex nods mutely.

“I can bear your pain with you,” Michael murmurs. “I'll be glad to.”

Alex tries to pretend his eyes aren't feeling with tears, and he traces the handprint.

“Did you make it on purpose?”

“Sort of? I didn't really know how to, but I wanted to,” Michael answers.

“Why here?” Alex asks softly.

Michael fits his hand onto the mark, right over his heart. “That way I know you won't lose it,” he says.

If they close their eyes, they can hear each other's heart beat.

**6** **.**

Jesse Manes' barely veiled threats against Michael hit Alex dead in the heart, and he flips out, for a while. He tries to push Michael away while he deals with his father so that Jesse can never harm either of them again.

It turns out that it's a lot harder when they can feel each other's emotions. Alex doesn't know if the new bond is stronger than the first, or if it's because they're physically close, but they share more than pain and strong feelings now. They share Michael's annoyance at his alarm in the morning, two hours after Alex is up. They share Alex's frustration that taking a shower and getting dressed takes so much time on one leg. They share the dull pain of too long days at work, and the sharp pain of a prosthetic twisting the wrong way. They share the bliss of watching the sunset out in the desert.

They share Alex's rush of fear at his father's words, and Michael is at his side in moments. Jesse is already gone, but Michael puts his hand on Alex's arm and Alex tells himself that he'll break it off tomorrow.

He tries. “I can't be with a criminal.”

Michael pushes back, because he knows that's not the real reason. “You're just looking for any excuse to walk away, huh?”

“Maybe you're just so good at giving them to me,” Alex says, breaking his own heart along with Michael's.

It doesn't last long. It can't last long. Alex can't hide the pain and the love from Michael, as he breaks down that night and cries himself to sleep. And he can't stay away, when Michael corners him at the Wild Pony. “The sex was epic.”

“Sometimes the world ends with a whimper, Guerin,” Alex murmurs, trying too hard.

The whimper that comes out of his throat when Michael drags him to a secluded corner and crashes his mouth onto his is not an end. It's a beginning.

**7.**

“You want to leave the planet,” Alex says, his voice strangely flat and emotionless.

Michael is so passionate, about his work, about his knowledge, and finally getting to share it with someone, that he doesn't notice at first. He keeps talking for a while, about the console's specs, the pieces he's still missing, and how to build a spaceship.

When he looks back, Alex is staring at him. Michael feels it then, the wave of _sadness grief fear_ coming straight out of him. It's like a punch to his ribcage.

“I'm not even close to finishing it,” he says.

It's the wrong thing to say.

“I need to go,” Alex says. “Just...process this. I need some time.”

Michael doesn't sleep that night, and neither does Alex. Michael tries to tug at the bound, communicate _something_, but he's never quite got the hang of it, and Alex isn't receptive tonight.

He wants to kick himself for not seeing how it would look to Alex. To him, the console is an object of fascination, a project, something to do with his hand and his head. He doesn't expect to ever take it to completion, not really.

He entertained the thought over and over, of course, when he thought Alex was dead. But now Alex is back, and Michael is never letting him go.

Three days later, Alex shows up with tears in his eyes and a large piece of the console in his hands.

“This is yours,” he says. “It'll help with your project.”

“I don't want to go without you,” Michael says.

“What if I don't want to leave?”

“Then I'll stay. My home isn't in the stars, that's just a dream. My home is wherever you are.”

“Home can be a person,” Alex mutters, like he's quoting someone.

Michael pulls him closer until their foreheads meet. They don't kiss this time. They don't have sex like the world is ending tomorrow−every time with Alex feels like a crash landing.

They stay like that for a while, just touching each other, eyes closed.

It's enough.

**8** **.**

They decide to stop keeping their relationship secret. It's not an easy decision for either of them. Max and Isobel already know something of Michael's love for Alex, but he's hidden the mark from them for ten years, and he knows they're going to hate him for that. Alex has finally decided to stand up to his father, has managed to send him away, but the fear lingers.

But it's something else, something unexpected, that turns out to be the straw that breaks them.

“Max thought my love for him wasn't real, when he marked me,” Liz tells them when they explain about Alex's mark. “He said it was probably just an echo of what he felt for me.”

Michael is the one who freaks out, this time. Alex too, at first, but it doesn't take him long to reason himself. His love for Michael didn't change after his leg was amputated and the connection was cut. It's all his.

As Noah's duplicity comes out, his unthinkable abuse of Isobel, Michael decides that he must have forced Alex into this, too, and he feels sick at the thought of what it means. They were seventeen and barely knew each other.

“But we connected like something−” Alex protests.

“Cosmic,” Michael finishes. “Exactly. It wasn't natural, not for you. Love doesn't happen that way to humans.”

“Yes it does!” Alex says desperately, but Michael won't hear it.

It doesn't help that less than a day later, he finally finds the family he's been looking for all his life, and it's ripped away from him. It's too much. Too much loss, too much grief, and Michael can't handle it.

He really, really can't handle Max's death.

And Alex may be alive, miraculously, after so many months of thinking him dead, but Michael did this to him, this _repugnant_ thing, and he knows. He knows love is the worst thing that ever happened to him, and he is the worst thing that ever happened to Alex. Alex who is so tied up with him that he would have died with him in Caulfield.

He tells Alex that, and he runs.

He makes the awful mistake of running into Maria's arms. Maria is willing, and like all the other girls he's slept with, she doesn't wake up with a shimmering handprint on her body. Because that's just for Alex. She's horrified, when she learns that she's slept with the man Alex is in love with, but the damage has been done.

Michael can feel the moment she tells Alex, the wave of _hurt hurt hurt_ makes him stumble and almost fall on the way to his truck. Alex's pain so far has mingled with his own, but now it's overpowering. Michael barely makes it back to his Airstream before he collapses in tears.

He wakes up to mind-numbing leg pain−Alex's bad days have proven trying−and determination. He's waiting by the firepit, his heart at the bottom of his stomach, when Valenti's car pulls up in the scrapyard and Alex comes out of the passenger seat, on crutches, his empty pant leg pinned up.

“I'm going to fight for us,” he says, when he's standing in front of Michael. “Whatever it takes. I'm going to prove to you that my love for you is real.”

Michael meets his eyes, _You are mine_ echoing in his head. “How can you want this, when I forced it onto you?”

“You didn't force anything on me. I fell in love before you made the mark, and I was still in love when it was gone. It's all mine. You didn't make me love you.”

“What if I did, and you can't even tell?”

“I know you didn't,” Alex says. “I think−we don't know for sure, of course, but I think the reason the mark never faded was because it was made of fully consensual two-sided love. That's why it doesn't just go one way, why you can feel me, too.”

“But what if−” Michael starts.

Alex drops one crutch, and slips his hand down his shirt, where the mark is. He closes his eyes and concentrates.

_Love love love_ rushes over Michael, so strong that he falls back into his chair. “Can you tell me that's not real?” Alex asks, opening his eyes again. “I love you, Michael. I've loved you for a long time, and I'm never going to stop, mark or no mark. I love you.”

Michael gasps, and pulls himself up, crashing into Alex. Alex loses his balance and they almost fall to the floor, and he has to use his telekinesis to hold them up.

“I love you too,” he murmurs.

Skin against skin, as their mouths meet, he can feel their hearts beat together.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this AU kind of came from all the soulmate prompts going round on Tumblr, so I consider it like a sort of soulmate AU, even if it technically isn't. It wouldn't leave me alone, and it got waaaaay too long.
> 
> I would love to hear your thoughts!


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